The Fox News morning show Fox & Friends edited a video clip of Rev. Al Sharpton to make it seem that demonstrators had chanted calls to kill police officers during his speech on Saturday, even though the two pieces of video were from two different cities.

“In Washington, the rally was held by the Rev. Al Sharpton, host of MSNBC program — and there he is,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson as video of Sharpton’s Saturday speech played. “Sharpton got up and explained, ‘We’re not against the police.’ This was his claim, listen.”

“What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” the protesters reportedly shouted.

The video then flipped back to Sharpton: “We’re not saying all police are bad. We’re not even saying most are bad. We’re not anti-police, but we’re anti-brutality. And the federal government must have a threshold to protect that.”

Fox News host Anna Kooiman pointed out after the clip aired that she had accidentally gotten stuck in traffic because of the protests in New York City, and never heard calls for violence against police.

“But what they were doing was making this into a racial issue,” Carlson opined. “What I don’t think this is about is race, I don’t think these are examples of racism. And I think it’s totally unhelpful to make this a conversation about white vs. black.”

“And it’s ridiculous to have it led by Al Sharpton who has zero credibility at all, he’s a hustler, and I think a criminal.”

Kooiman argued that instead of focusing on police violence and race issues, protesters should be outraged over bad parents in the black community.

“Where is the same outrage about the destruction of the family, and where are moms and dads in the household trying to raise kids right?” she asked. “Where’s the outrage about that? Or where’s the outrage when a police officer gets killed in the line of duty.”

Co-host Clayton Morris agreed that Sharpton should be speaking to protesters about the “real issue, which is the family breaking down.”

“Because it’s too hard!” Carlson exclaimed. “It’s so much easier — and you see the president of the United States doing this exact same thing. It’s so much easier just to claim white racism is America’s biggest problem.”

“It takes the onus off you, you don’t have to do anything about massive unemployment in the black community, about crime in the black community, about the destruction of the black family,” Carlson continued. “Those are the real issues. But you get to ignore them when you blame it all on racism.”

About the Author

David Edwards has served as an editor at Raw Story since 2006. His work can also be found at Crooks & Liars, and he's also been published at The BRAD BLOG. He came to Raw Story after working as a network manager for the state of North Carolina and as as engineer developing enterprise resource planning software. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidEdwards.